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THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 



BY 

A. MAURICE LOW, M. A. 

Author of "The American People, a Study in National Psychology ' 
" Great Britain and the War," &c. 



Washington 
Columbian Printing Company, Inc. 



4< 



THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 



BY 
A. MAURICE LOW, M. A. 

Author of " The American People, a Study in National Psychology 
" Great Britain and the War," &c. 



Washington 
Columbian Printing Company, Inc. 



■ L-6 



Reprinted from The North American Review, September, 1915. 
The whole or any part of this Essay may be republished, provided 
proper credit is given. 



By. transfer 
The IRMte House 



"THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 



During the last few months our ears have been much belabored with 
a high-sounding phrase. The world dearly loves a phrase, and the less 
of meaning it has the more it will be petted and coddled. "High air 
castles are cunningly built of words, the words well bedded also in good 
logic mortar," rails Carlyle in cynical mood, but philosophical withal, 
his cynicism gleaming with the flame of truth. "The Freedom of the 
Seas" is the latest shibboleth. Serious men and serious publications 
have fallen to its charm, and there are to-day many well meaning per- 
sons, doing their thinking at second-hand, who are victims to the mis- 
chief of this fallacious phrase. 

Let us begin by clearly understanding what is meant. -In time of 
peace, when nations respect international law and the code of morality, 
the seas are free to all the world. The sea is the one great Democracy, 
for there all nations are equal and the ocean bestows impartially its 
favors. England, the greatest naval Power in the world, possesses no 
rights that are not enjoyed by Holland, whose naval power is negligible ; 
or shared by Switzerland, whose flag no ocean has seen. England's 
naval strength gives her no advantages over other nations ; she is sub- 
ject to the same laws and rules and regulations ; her might does not 
absolve her from responsibilities or relieve her from obligations. "The 
freedom of the seas" is, therefore, an expression without meaning and 
without value when conscience governs, when sanity rules, when moral- 
ity is dominant, and nation calls to nation in the voice of friendship. 
But what is the case in time of war? 

This phrase would not have been much heard if German calculations 
had worked out successfully. We must state the facts plainly in order 
to ascertain the truth. When Germany plunged Europe into war a year 
ago she relied with as much confidence on her navy as on her army ; 
she was as certain that her navy was strong enough to enable her to 
keep the sea as she felt secure in the invincibility of her army. Events 
quickly made her realize that she had as greatly overrated her own naval 
strength as she had underestimated that of her opponent. A few months 
after the declaration of war the German mercantile flao- vanished from 



4 "THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 

the seven seas ; the great German merchant marine, on which the life 
of the Empire depends, had either fallen prize to the enemy, or was 
bottled up in neutral ports, or tied up to the deserted docks of home 
ports.: a mocking memory of what once had been Germany's pride. Her 
ships of war, after having given a gallant account of themselves, were 
battered and sent beneath the waves or driven to seek asylum by in- 
ternment ; her fighting fleet, refusing to fight, is powerless. In contrast 
to the collapse of German sea power, her enemy carried out the most 
marvellous troop movement the world records. Hundreds of thousands 
of men, with their horses, guns and supplies were sent from the four 
quarters of the globe to France. Hundreds of thousands of tons of 
merchandise — raw material for manufacturing purposes, foodstuffs, mili- 
tary equipment of all kinds — had entered and cleared from the ports of 
Great Britain and France. And while this was going on, possible only 
because the German navy virtually was non-existent and the British navy 
held command of the seas, the coast of Germany was laid under block- 
ade, the High Sea Fleet of Germany was "contained" by the British 
navy, and was a menace only as a "fleet in being" must always be a 
military danger to be reckoned with and guarded against. To sum up: 
Germany, a year after the declaration of hostilities, despite the millions 
she has spent upon her navy, has seen her commerce destroyed, her 
ports closed, her supplies dwindling, her military strength weakened, her 
financial position daily growing more precarious, because she cannot 
sell, and what she buys she must pay for in gold at a ruinous price. 

Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that Germany, 
in her extremity, should appeal to the sympathy of the United States, 
and clamor for "the freedom of the seas." 

Was is brutal business, and one of the brutalities of war is that the 
innocent often suffer almost as much as the guilty; the neutral nation, 
neither responsible for the war nor having anything to gain by it, has 
its commerce dislocated, its people forced to take great risks and meet 
heavy losses. To prevent Germany from obtaining cotton, for instance, 
works a very serious loss to the American cotton grower, but it is one 
of the consequences of the war provoked by Germany. Cotton is ab- 
solutely essential to Germany for the prosecution of the war, for without 
cotton Germany is unable to manufacture guncotton, and without gun- 
cotton, torpedoes are useless and high explosives cannot be made. Great 
Britain and her Allies, therefore, must prevent Germany from securing 
cotton. 

Under a system that has slowly expanded, the world has agreed that 
when nations are at war certain articles used exclusively for military 



"THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 5 

purposes shall be declared contraband ; they may be traded in at the risk 
of the trader, but are properly subject to capture. In the old days the 
contraband list was very simple — powder, cannon, firearms, and a few 
other similar articles. Modern warfare has called every resource of 
science to its aid, with the result that there is scarcely an article of 
commerce that cannot be used for military purposes ; hence the contra- 
band list has been greatly extended, and now covers the principal articles 
of commerce as well as many entering into the arts and sciences. Take 
cotton as a typical illustration. Before the discovery of high explosives, 
its value was commercial and not military, but since the invention of the 
modern gun, with its great range and penetrative power, cotton, to 
nations at war, has become one of the most important elements in the 
manufacture of munitions, and its commercial use is subordinate. It is 
the same with scores of other articles that lose their innocent character 
the moment war is declared. 

Out of the intercourse of nations has grown up international law, which 
is not law in the sense of municipal law, but is a rather loose arrangement 
by which nations agree to do or not to do certain things that are partly 
for their own interest, partly for the general convenience and benefit of 
mankind. International law is founded largely on precedent, on arrange- 
ments that have been found to work with fair satisfaction, partly on 
treaties and agreements that have become incorporated into the unwritten 
law of nations. 

It is this vague and ill-defined corpus juris that allows belligerents cer- 
tain rights and protects the rights of neutrals. Thus, it is lawful for a 
belligerent to blockade an enemy's port, but the blockade must be ef- 
fective physically, not merely a paper decree. Having effectually sealed 
the ports, or being in command of the approaches to the coast, a neutral 
vessel attempting to enter a blockaded port may be lawfully captured, and, 
with its cargo, condemned as prize. 

But while the right of seizure is granted to the belligerent so as to en- 
able him to inflict as much damage as possible upon his opponent, and a 
neutral Government must not, as a Government, supply either belligerent 
or give any help to the one not given to the other, the observance of 
strict neutrality places no restrictions upon the trading of the citizens 
of a neutral nation with belligerents. A neutral may trade with a belliger- 
ent, but he does so at his peril. If there is sufficient profit to risk sending 
cotton or anything else to a country under blockade, there will always be 
adventurous spirits to make the attempt. Neither equity nor morals re- 
quires the neutral Government to prevent this commerce. To do so 
would be to make the so-called neutral not a neutral, but an ally of one 



6 "THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 

belligerent and an opponent of the other. The obligation to prevent the 
cargo reaching its destination is imposed not upon the neutral, but upon 
the belligerent, who must be strong enough to make his blockade ef- 
fective or suffer the consequences. 

International law makes a foolish and illogical distinction between ab- 
solute and conditional contraband. Under the former is comprised all 
articles that are solely for military use— arms, projectiles, explosives, in- 
gredients for their manufacture, and other things of a similar character, 
the Government at war having notified the world by proclamation of what 
it holds to be absolute contraband. 

Conditional contraband may be used for military purposes, but need not 
necessarilv be so used, and its legality of seizure hinges on use and owner- 
ship. Take foodstuffs as an illustration ; it is because Great Britain is 
strong enough to prevent the importation of foodstuffs into Germany that 
the German Government would like to have international law changed. 

Foodstuffs imported by a Government or purchased by the military 
authorities are absolute contraband, on the theory that they are to be 
applied to military use. Foodstuffs purchased by private individuals are 
conditional contraband, on the theory, an entirely false one as I shall 
presently show, that they are for the use not of the military but of the 
civilian population ; and while humanity does not revolt at the thought 
of an enemy's army being starved, it refuses to allow the "innocent" — 
that is, the non-combatants — to be starved. 

This is the extreme of absurdity. The complexities of modern warfare 
make it impossible to differentiate between combatants and "non-com- 
batants. - * The man, woman, or child working in the Krupp factory 
in Essen is as much a combatant as the Prussian private in the trenches 
in France. The private fires a rifle, and if his aim is good, he kills a 
British or French or Belgian soldier; yes, but with what? — with the 
cartridge that is the handiwork of the men, women, and children working 
in the Krupp factory in Essen. The theory of "non-combatant" seems to 
collapse here. 

The conductor who is to-day in charge of a freight train of cotton 
en route to a mill to be converted into explosives, is a "non-combatant," 
whose starvation is a crime. But to-morrow he is called to the colors as 
a reservist, and thus he may be starved, because he is a combatant. A 
schoolboy's debating club would laugh at a proposition so illogical. 

Germany would like to enjoy "the freedom of the seas" while denying 
that freedom to other nations. In torpedoing neutral merchant vessels and 
giving their crews and passengers no chance to escape, Germany has 
violated the fundamental law of nations that the sea is free to all neu- 



"THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 7 

trals, and a vessel may be destroyed only after adequate provision has 
been made for the protection of life. 

The purpose of a blockade is threefold. It is (1) to prevent the enemy 
from receiving those articles of military necessity without which it can- 
not prosecute the war; (2) to prevent the importation of food if the 
country is not able to furnish food for the support of its army and civil 
population from its own resources; (3) to prevent the enemy from en- 
gaging in commerce. All three purposes are designed to accomplish the 
same end. If the enemy cannot obtain military supplies, its offensive is 
weakened and its resistance breaks down. If the enemy is placed on short 
rations, its moral and physical strength is impaired. If it cannot trade, 
its financial power is crippled, and beggary forces the surrender of its 
armies. 

To the emotional, this may sound very dreadful ; and it is very dread- 
ful. Slowly to strangle a nation to death, to weaken its power of re- 
sistance, to enfeeble it by hunger, to impoverish it — these things move 
pity. But war, as it has been observed, is brutal business, and while the 
neutral may be moved by contemplating its horrors and may with pro- 
priety try to mitigate them, no neutral may or should interfere in what 
is clearly not its concern. To do so, I repeat — and it cannot be too often 
repeated because of the erroneous views entertained — is to strip the neu- 
tral of neutrality and make him an ally. 

The cry raised by Germany that it is inhuman, and against all precedent 
in civilized warfare, to starve the non-combatant population, I deny on 
three grounds. 

First, I deny its inhumanity. It is, on the contrary, the most humane 
way of conducting war. When people feel the pangs of hunger they will 
no longer fight, and the war can sooner be brought to an end by hunger 
than it can in any other way. It is more humane to make people ex- 
perience the discomforts of short rations (it is dishonest to talk about 
their being "starved," as if they were actually in danger of dying from 
want of nourishment) than to kill them with bullets, or cause them to 
suffer the awful agony of suffocation from gas, or to wound them and 
compel them to drag out the rest of their lives crippled, blind, tortured by 
their wounds, a misery to themselves and a charge upon relatives or 
charity. 

Second, I deny the existence of "non-combatants." For the reasons 
I have already given, practically the entire population of the German 
Empire may be said to be fighting, either in the field or in the factory. 
A neutral who joins the armed forces of a belligerent, according to in- 
ternational law, forfeits his neutrality. A German, man or woman, who 



8 "THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 

contributes to the fighting efficiency of Germany, loses his or her status 
as a non-combatant. Neither law nor morality will recognize a dual re- 
lation : a combatant for the profit of Germany, and a non-combatant so 
that the individual may escape the rigors of war. 

Third, I deny that a blockade to prevent a civilian population obtaining 
food is without precedent in modern warfare ; and for that precedent 
I refer the reader to the American Civil War. President Lincoln's 
blockade of the Confederacy had a double purpose : to prevent the ex- 
portation of cotton, which was the only means by which the South could 
raise money ; and to prevent the importation of foodstuffs, medical sup- 
plies, and articles of military necessity. In all history there is no greater 
lover of humanity than Lincoln, no man with a heart more tender, no man 
with a deeper love for his fellow man ; and yet Lincoln put in force a 
blockade that slowly but very surely strangled the South ; that paralyzed 
it financially and brought its people to know the meaning of hunger. He 
did this because of his humanity ; because terrible as were the suffer- 
ings of the South, they were less dreadful than slaughter and the human 
wreckage of war. And in that day, there were, in fact as well as in name, 
non-combatants. There were no great factories in which women and 
children worked turning out shells and cartridges and high explosives ; 
the places of the men withdrawn from industrial pursuits were not filled 
by women; trade came to an absolute standstill, for when the men left 
field or forge or factory the women could not supplant them. 

Humane as Lincoln was, his blockade of the South brought untold 
misery to England. The English factories, unable to obtain cotton, were 
forced to close down ; hundreds of thousands of operatives starved, — 
and I use the word in no rhetorical sense. They starved. Women and 
little children went hungry and died because there was no work for them 
and they could not procure food. The North was not spending millions 
of dollars a day in England in the purchase of munitions, as England is 
doing to-day in America ; trade with the South was cut off ; the war, in- 
stead of making England rich, left her poorer; the wretched creatures 
who died because the looms of Lancashire were silent, paid the penalty 
that neutrals must always pay in time of war. All these things Lincoln 
knew, and he was sorely grieved, but it did not swerve him. 

The Civil War lasted four years. How long would it have lasted had 
the pernicious doctrine of "the freedom of the seas" been a principle of 
international law in 1861 ? Out of the ports of the Southern Confederacy 
would have sailed the merchant marine of the world loaded with cotton, 
which would have been exchanged for the food the South craved and the 
guns and the powder the South so sorely needed, and under the theory of 



'THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 9 

"private property rights" the navy of the North would have been as ef- 
fective as toy ships on a lake of glass. It would have been the salvation 
of the South, just as to-day it would be the salvation of Germany. 

Does anyone believe that if Germany had been able to destroy the 
British fleet, and the coasts of England were under blockade and her 
people were being reduced to surrender by starvation, Germany would be 
the champion of "the freedom of the seas"? Germany has openly an- 
nounced that that is what she is attempting to do — to starve England into 
surrender. That, she has said, is the purpose of her submarine warfare 
— to cut off the food supplies of England, Great Britain not being self- 
sustaining and having to rely on other countries to feed her people. 

Germany having met defeat on the sea, now invokes the aid of the 
neutral nations to bring about "the freedom of the seas." Having been 
unable to destroy the British navy by gunfire she would destroy its use- 
fulness by diplomacy. It is the British navy that stands between Ger- 
many and the food she does or does not need, but which she seems so 
anxious to secure, the cotton which America alone can supply, and the 
numerous other articles neutral nations would willingly sell if German 
ports were not barred by British cruisers. What Germany cannot do by 
her own strength the world is to do for her; the world, calling itself 
neutral, is to give the lie to its professions of neutrality by nullifying the 
advantage England possesses through superior naval strength. 

An idea that is fantastic, dishonest, or dangerous will always commend 
itself to a certain type of mind if it is clothed in the garments of rhetoric 
or can be made to serve morality and appeal to self-interest. "The free- 
dom of the seas" can be made to serve two masters, Mammon and 
Righteousness. The neutral trader, instead of being incommoded by war, 
would greatly profit by it, as there would be no interference with 
trade, and the inevitable effect of war is to enhance commodity prices, 
so that self interest would be served. Blockades being outlawed and 
so-called non-contraband goods immune from seizure, sea power would 
lose its former importance, and the world would no longer be shocked 
by witnessing the seizure of a ship attempting to carry goods of prime 
military necessity to a blockaded belligerent. Why some persons should 
regard it as peculiarly immoral for a cruiser to seize a merchant vessel 
trying to trade with the enemy, but find no violation of morality if the 
same goods are seized on land, it is not easy to say, but they do. 

This is the explanation of Germany's anxiety to secure "the freedom 
of the seas," and is the meaning of the propaganda now being carried on 
in the United States. If blockades are no longer sanctioned and so-called 
"private property" rights in cargoes are recognized, Germany, after the 



10 "THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS" 

conclusion of peace, need spend less money on her navy and have very 
much more to spend on her army, on building even larger guns than those 
she now has, and creating greater reserves of arms and ammunition than 
she had when war was declared last year. But it is a principle that the 
serious and matured thought of neither the United States nor Great 
Britain will accept, as it would immeasurably weaken the defensive power 
of both countries, and would mean the reckless abandonment of a weapon 
on which both nations must rely for defense. 

That the United States may be involved in war is a contingency not 
to be dismissed lightly or regarded as impossible, for in history nothing 
is impossible. If the United States were at war the result might be de- 
termined by two things — its power effectively to blockade the coast of 
its enemy, and its power to prevent the enemy from being supplied by 
neutrals. The United States is the one country that is self-contained. 
It can rely on its own resources to furnish all the food it needs ; out of 
the earth it can dig coal, copper, iron, and the other minerals on which 
war feeds ; cotton is the yield of its fields ; all the guns and munitions 
and everything else necessary to warfare, its own skilled workmen could 
create. The United States might be blockaded, if such a thing were pos- 
sible, and its people would know none of the horrors of famine or have 
to deny themselves either necessity or luxury. 

Enjoying by the grace of fortune such superb advantages, is it conceiv- 
able that American statesmen would consider, or the American people 
permit, their sacrifice in obedience to the demand of the false prophets, 
the sentimentalists, the theorists, who, meaning well, do the most harm 
because their vision is clouded and they live in a maze. 

No, "the freedom of the seas" in time of war is impossible, because 
it is a perversion of both the human and natural law, the law that en- 
ables the man or the animal endowed with superior advantages to use them 
for protection when life is at stake. 



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